DCPS needs a chancellor who understands that high school problems begin with the narrow elementary curriculum

The resignation of D.C. Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson in the wake of two embarrassing scandals at the high school level could provide D.C. schools with an opportunity to change course and regain its reputation as a national model of education reform. But that can only happen if officials recognize the true source of both scandals: elementary school, long considered the bright spot in the system.

Comments

I couldn’t agree more that the problems lately revealed in DCPS graduating students who shouldn’t have been does begin long before high school when the problem is being years behind in subject matter, and not just getting caught in a tangle of rules and regs about attendance and related matters.
One thing Wilson did that gave me the impression he understood that not learning K-8 was leading to the problems of students being unprepared for high school level work was to make it a goal of the five year plan that all second graders would be reading at grade level by the end of second grade.
Of course, if that were done in the same spirit and approach of being simply about better numbers with all the hollowness and pressure that engenders, it may not have been successful in improving true learning.
But it was something I gave him credit for as I had never seen any of his predecessors look at DCPS as a whole system providing the continuum for accumulating knowledge, skills, and abilities from the kindergarten level step by step or grade by grade up to graduation.
It seems instead they saw the system too much in terms of the “autonomy” of individual schools, math and reading test scores and specialized schools in a “portfolio,” not unlike the chartered schools.

I have to say, making sure that all second graders are “reading at grade level” by the end of second grade sounds like a good idea, but it can actually be part of the problem. Certainly we need to make sure that second graders have acquired the decoding skills they need by the end of second grade. But if “reading at grade level” is also measured by supposed reading COMPREHENSION skills (finding the main idea, etc.)– as it generally is — and if that leads to hours and hours of practicing those skills at the expense of learning about social studies, science, etc., you can easily end up producing students who can decode but can’t understand what they’re reading because they lack background knowledge and vocabulary.

It’s not at all clear to me that Wilson understood that — or if he did, he didn’t act on that understanding.